It’s Saturday morning in Tokyo. Shortly, I’ll be giving the keynote address at the first Maker Conference at Miraikan. The conference is organized by O’Reilly Japan and jp.makezine.com.

Maker Conference Tokyo, June 2012

MAKE’s first Japanese edition in Tokyo in 2006, edited by Hideo Tamura. The first Maker Meeting, a small Maker Faire was held in 2008. It attraced 300 people. Last fall, the Maker Meeting event was held last November at Tokyo Institute of Technology and 12,000 people attended. Today brings together makers from across Japan to share ideas and experiences. Making seems to be established in a number of universities and there are a growing number of makerspaces of all sorts. Notably, there’s Fab Cafe — think lattes and laser cutters under one roof. I haven’t visited yet but the pictures I’ve seen are amazing. “Fab Life” is a new book from Professor Tanaka about living in a house that doubles as a fab lab. Fab Life was just published in Japanese by O’Reilly Japan. Makers are talking about what this means for manufacturing, innovation, and education.

The Maker Conference Tokyo is a sign of the growing worldwide participation in the maker movement. I’m glad to be here to experience it firsthand.